Chantelle was born and raised (for the most part) in Durban, Kwa-Zulu Natal. She studied graphic design at Natal Technikon and went on to become a Creative Director in a local medium-sized agency; a wholly varied and exciting part of her career. In 1999 she left the ad-world behind and moved to Johannesburg to marry her husband, Burgen Thorne, and began illustrating. A whole new life began.

For the last seven years she has been working from a home-based office she shares with her husband in Kensington, Johannesburg, surrounded by their motley menagerie of dogs, cats, birds and fish (their horses don’t live at home - yet). She has illustrated a variety of books ranging from adult education books, to textbooks for all grades, to children’s story-books. The story-books are her passion and she feels that they’re even better than eating chocolates (and far less fattening!). In 2005 she submitted some of her stories to a local South African publisher and was delighted when her first two stories - Clip, Clop, Stop and On My Way to School - were accepted and published.

She feels that doing something she loves for a living is a joy too few experience, and relishes every day she spends writing or illustrating.